J.D. Vance Promoted Rumors of Pet-Eating Immigrants Even After Learning They Were ‘Baseless’

“To justify Vance’s continued promotion of what he himself had described as “rumors” that might not be true, the candidate’s staff on Tuesday gave the Journal “a police report in which a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken by Haitian neighbors.” But “when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later—found safe in her own basement.” Kilgore, who was “wearing a Trump shirt and hat,” said “she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.”

The “cat-eating rumors,” the Journal notes, “started with a post by a Springfield woman on a private Facebook page.” That account “turned out to be third-hand” and was “subsequently disavowed by the original poster, according to NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation.”

This is the sort of evidence that Vance apparently had in mind when he told CNN’s Dana Bash that his information about pet-eating immigrants “comes from firsthand accounts from my constituents.””

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